‘Trust is the most important thing when selling a business’
The Onion+ and Pepper+ product lines make Peter CV Europe's foremost specialist in developing food products based on onion and pepper. The business was established in 1988 and mainly delivers to vegetable processing companies, catering businesses and fast food restaurants. Peter CV supplies Subway and McDonald’s in the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Ireland and Belgium. The company has been an ABAB client for accountancy services since 2010. ABAB Corporate Finance recently guided the company through its sale to Hessing Supervers. ‘Trust is the most important thing when selling a business.’
Trusted partners are important in takeover processes
ABAB recently guided Peter CV through its sale to Hessing Supervers. Former owners Albert Linders and Alex Buermans have stayed on within the business. ‘Alex wanted to sell his shares. After discussing this thoroughly and coming to the joint decision to approach a third party, Alex made contact with Hessing Supervers, starting the sale process. In the end, I decided to sell my shares too’, says Linders. After talking to account manager Kees Hermes, Linders and Buermans were put in touch with senior corporate finance advisor Rob van Boxtel, with whom they had been in contact in the past. ‘It’s important to have a trusted partner in this kind of process. We established that relationship of trust quickly, thanks to good communication and effective guidance. It’s great to have an independent advisor on your side to guide you throughout the process; they can say things that you cannot, or dare not, say yourself. He was not afraid to occasionally ruffle a few feathers.’
Collaboration with various specialists
The process lasted a year, a period in which the businessmen were kept very busy and many decisions had to be made. ‘Advisors need to sense, intuitively, what is urgent and what is not. At the end of the day, the point is for everything to be arranged properly.’ A fixed team of specialists from ABAB were involved, including senior business lawyer Gaby Ratering and senior tax advisor Rolf Brouwer. ‘It’s wonderful to have all these specialisms in house for a process like this. Because the specialists worked in a fixed team, communicating and working together was straightforward and, where necessary, work could be smoothly handed over from one team member to another. They kept me informed throughout. This collaboration between various specialists, all approaching the sale from different angles, made it possible to look to the future and identify risks. We really appreciated how proactive they were.’
Speaking the entrepreneur's language
Looking back on the process, Linders still thinks trust was the most important thing. ‘It’s all about the people advising you, and the confidence you have in those people. The process went well in every aspect.’ He says he would recommend ABAB to other businesspeople. ‘ABAB's advisors understand me as an entrepreneur. They speak my language, and so we work well together.’
More information
For more information about Corporate Finance, please contact Gert-Jan van den Berg, senior corporate finance advisor, on +31 (0)134647238 or by email.
